Edna St Vincent Millay, Poetry, College Term Papers.com


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Back to Subjects - Poetry

Edna St Vincent Millay

Edna St Vincent Millay Her career that spanned three decades and her work that ranges from lyrics to verse play and political commentary. Edna St. Vincent Millay is mostly known for her earlier works, such as “Renascence”, Few Figs Thistles, and Second April. Millay wrote about things such as mystical views on the universe, god, death, celebration of feminism, and free love. It’s almost as if she was a writer from today and with that, I believe that she would be comfortable with today’s free America. Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine on February 2, 1892. She was the first daughter of three girls; her parents, Cora Buzzelle Millay and Henry Tolman Millay. Millay’s parents divorced in 1900 and her mother settled with Millay and two sisters in Camden, Maine. She was influenced by her mother, who encouraged her daughters’ interests in arts and raised them to be self-reliant with love of books and music. Cora taught Millay to write peotry when she was four and to play the piano at the age of seven (Gray 123). Millay first published a poem at age fourteen, it was published in St. Nicholes magazine, which was a children periodical that continued to publish her young works. Her writing kept improving as she wrote and edited for her school magazine at Camden High School. Millay was later encouraged by her mother to submit a poem called “Renascence”; Millay’s poem was ranked at the top five in the contest. Millay, later entered Vassar College to pursue her talent. There, Millay concentrated her studies on literature, drama, and classic and modern languages. Sometimes she even had her poems published in the Vassar Miscellany and acted in school dramas.(Millay par. 3) After her graduation, Millay’s first volume of poetry, Renascence and Other Poems was published and critics loved it. She was considered a recognizable figure in the literary world, but it didn’t help her out financially. At this time Millay and her sister Norma moved to Greenwich Village in New York where Millay tried to make a living in acting(Millay par. 5). In the Village, Millay found a new side of herself and was for women’s rights and free love, which made living life to the absolute fullest. James Gray writes,” For two decades of her ever-rising popularity–the twenties and thirties of the century–she seemed to personify the spirit of time: it’s exuberance, it’s defiance of conversation, it’s determination to discover and to declare a sharply defined identity” (Gray;Press 5). It’s was also often pointed out Millay’s numerous love affairs as well as the all-night parties and their customary drinking. She soon found out that this was not the easy life, for financially she, again was not doing well. Millay would find in today’s America the people do experiment, not everyone, but sometimes that’s the only way to find themselves. In Millay’s case, these experiences helped her write some of her best poems and plays, because she wrote about reality. Also, it was rumored that Millay had encounters with the same sex and was criticized for her experiments, if that to be true; she would be pleased with today’s America and how were fighting and trying to get used to the fact of “free love”. Millay returned to writing and stuck with it. She was a prolific writer with more than fifteen volumes of poetry to her credit, five published plays, and two translations. Her poem, “The Ballad Harp-Weaver,” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Not long after that, she married, Eugen Boissevain, who gave up his business to manage her poetry-reading tours. Often, many critics, focused on Millay’s poetic style because of her decision to write ballads, lyrics, and sonnets, and at this time modern poetry was abandoning these styles(Millay par. 11). Millay’s writing was noted as being extremely personal, writing of herself and her love affairs, but many reflect wider concerns. Millay, for this matter, in today’s world, would be a very happy woman. Freedom of speech and freedom of write is very diverse in today’s America, people are experimenting with different ways of writing all the time. The writing that is widely appreciated, is non-fictional. People don’t want to read the expected; they want to read the truth. Honestly, people like to read the juicy stuff; that is the material that keep people reading. Millay’s work often included nature and the search for the “integrity of the individual spirit”(Gray 122). Her very personal work did become political on several occasions. Millay was outraged by the atrocities of Hitler and she addressed her talent to the war effort. The result of this was Make Bright the Arrows. Also Millay published “The Murder Lidice” which was designed as a propaganda piece recounting the German destruction of Czech village and was published by the Writer’s War Board(Millay par. 9). Millay was a very out spoken person, she would let people know how she felt about an important event or tragedy. In today’s America, people are doing this left and right; yes it may be annoying, but Millay was doing hers in a civil fashion; she wrote it on paper. I think that kind of writing would be appreciated and applauded. These war poems that she wrote are often noted as the point where Millay fell out of her popular appeal, although many critics now point to her last poem, Mine The Harvest, which was said to be some of her best work Millay, in her time, was recognized for the “boundaries of conventional subject matter for women writer, while showing the range and the depth of the feminine character” (Quartermain 276) and for achieving success in composition of many forms, such as drama, opera, lyrics, and sonnets. James Gray writes,” She belongs to an impressive company of artists who came to maturity and found their voices during the second quarter of the century. Many of these have undertaken to explore the darkest caves of the secret mind of a man and they have developed new poetic forms in which to record their experiences. Among then the figure of Edna St. Vincent Millay is conspicuous because she stands alone in a blaze of light. It is impossible not to understand what she has to say, impossible not to be moved by the simple, direct, eloquent statements of her convictions” (Gray;Press 45). This quote is a great example of how today’s America would feel towards her honest work. Readers today, like the simple and direct readings; it’s a way of understanding life. If we are moved by ones reading, or we get something knowledgeable out of it, then it was worth reading. Millay wrote of many informational things of life and moved readers in her day, but these people didn’t know what to think about the truth; they weren’t ready for that yet. Millay would be very pleased of today’s America. We are very diverse. She was just ahead of her time and people didn’t know how to accept her experimental writings. Bibliography: Work Cited Gray, James. Edna St. Vincent Millay. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967 Quartermain, Peter, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Poets 1880-1945. Vol 45 Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1986. Gray, James. American Writers III. University of Minnesota 1974 http://www.personal.ksu.edu Edna St. Vincent Millay. December 1, 2000.

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